Someone (who shall remain nameless) emailed me last week week and casually slipped into the email that she had 15,000 emails in her Inbox. My jaw dropped.
I reeeally hope she doesn’t mind me sharing this with you, but this is the advice I gave her to get out from underneath that mountain. I figured it may help you too:
Digging Out
There are TOO many people with 3,000, 10,000, 15,000 emails in their Inbox. That number has to feel suffocating and overwhelming at times.
I have 2 emails in my Inbox right now, and I always end the day with a 0 Inbox. Yep … ZERO. That’s not because I’m sitting around with nothing to do and no one to talk to either (lol!). I easily exchange 150 emails each day being a service provider and managing my team of 12.
I know that a LOT of people face this issue. Maybe you do too! I hope this strategy helps. 🙂
I have a few tricks I’d like to pass along in case it helps you:
- Search in bulk for newsletters you subscribe to based on keywords you know connect to each list you signed up for. Select All, Mark All as Read.
- If you really have good intention to still review all of that information, you can locate those emails just as easily by searching for the keyword relating to that newsletter versus keeping all of those Unread.
- If you have multiple email accounts, talk with an IT person, a web developer or your email account provider’s customer support and set it up so that all email accounts flow into one main account.
- Unsubscribe to ALL lists that you aren’t “really” engaged in anymore. You can always re-subscribe later. (This is a great tool.)
- Search in bulk for any other common email notifications you get from your bank, social media accounts, etc. Select All, Mark All as Read.
- Review this MUCH reduced Inbox number for anything else you can Mark Read in bulk.
- Hopefully, you’ll have a very small number left in your Inbox at this point which you can clear individually and get down to a 0 Inbox.
- Get in the habit of clearing out that Inbox once each day. Read any new email that comes in. If you have intentions to “read it later,” mark is as Read anyway, or skim the email for now and still mark it as Read. But do not trust you’ll come back to it later if you mark as Unread.
Again, you can always come back to those 15,000 emails later through your Search tool.
But I promise you this … you will FINALLY feel FREE from your Inbox. You’ll feel more excited to tackle new information that comes in and clear it out.
I know you weren’t asking for help on this, and I hope I didn’t overstep. But I know the feeling that can come in and drag you down by having too much piled up. Within less than an afternoon … that could all be a memory!
For fun … comment below and tell me how many emails are in YOUR Inbox right now!
I have 7.
Until next time!
xoxo
Amber Vilhauer
I had 3,500+ unread emails for the past 7 years. You just inspired me to go through and take care of it so it is now at ZERO unread! Oh my, that feels nice. Thank you for the inspiration, Amber!”
– Patricia James (Patti Breton) PBJ Coaching
